In search of the famed ship Beagle, which carried Charles Darwin to his discoveries

Dick Durham in search of Beagle whose beams and other timbers were evidently used in house building around the Essex coast

For several years I kept my Contessa 32, Minstrel Boy, at Paglesham on the River Roach in Essex and was a member of the Roach Cruising Association (RCA), one of those Corinthian organisations where yachtsmen, who wished to remain independent of the local ‘toff’ clubs, could keep their oars, outboards and welly boots in an ancient tin shed on legs.

This arcane lock up was almost as old as the ramshackle, tarred boatshed on the wrong side of the sea wall, which flooded on big tides, and where the late Frank Shuttlewood designed and built sailing barges, smacks and traditional yachts.

We kept our dinghies there too and I was astonished to find that members of the RCA included long distance ocean sailors – one a circumnavigator – a real eye-opener in a lost backwater world of impecunious yachtsmen.

Over the years the charm of this forgotten delta of saltmarsh, wildfowl and oyster layings, had been the heartland of Yachting Monthy’s then editor, Maurice Griffiths, whose musings on the area lured Eric Hiscock and wife Susan into its embrace in their unsuitably deep Wanderer II.

What these illustrious folks did not know then was that the shadow of their sails was thrown over HMS Beagle’s hulk, the remains of which lie 20ft or so at the bottom of a mud-dock just down river from the Shuttlewood’s shed.

But thanks partly to the investigations of yachtsman Rodney Choppin, a former RSA member who once owned the Shuttlewood-built 30ft centre-boarder, Halloween, and his partner Ann Boulter, the 19th century dock, built to accommodate Beagle when she was serving as a Coastguard Watch Vessel, is now protected as a nationally important site.

Beagle was launched in May 1820 at Woolwich Dockyard on the River Thames and is most famous for being the vessel aboard which Charles Darwin, from 1831-36, made the observations on which he based his theory of natural selection.​

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In 1845, Beagle transferred to the Customs Service to control smuggling on the Essex Coast as a static watch vessel. Her masts were removed and she was renamed Coast Guard Watch Vessel No. 7.

Beagle was sold in 1870 and her planking stripped. Some of her knees were used in the construction of Shuttlewood’s shed and her beams and other timbers were used in house building. But the bottom of the hull is thought to remain under the mud in the dock.

The late Dr Robert Prescott, from the University of St Andrews, made probes in 2003, and more recent work by the University of Southampton, showed that there are substantial remains in the dock. In 2019 Historic England commissioned Wessex Archaeology to investigate the mud berth ahead of the bicentenary of Beagle’s launch in May 2020.

Four anchors were used to keep Beagle on station off Paglesham. An Admiralty pattern anchor – salvaged from the creek and thought to be part of the Beagle’s ground tackle – now sits in the front garden of Rodney Choppin’s cottage near the waterfront.

Census records from the 19th century show that the ship accommodated seven coastguard officers and their families and Ann Boulter has recovered bric-a-brac including clay pipes, broken crockery, even Victorian children’s toys from the old mud berth.

On a recent visit to Paglesham I was delighted to find the 17th-century Punch Bowl inn has re-opened. This was always the venue for the RSA when I was a member and is where yachtsmen can sit in the saloon of HMS Beagle, well almost: adzed timbers used in the building’s conversion from sail-loft to alehouse are likely from the old ship.

Ironically while seven Excise officers kept watch over the moon-raked waters of the river at least one smuggler came in behind them: William Blyth – also the local constable – who’s party piece, in the Punch Bowl, was to down two scoops of Bordeaux prior to eating the glasses. Blyth would have presented Darwin, who had a fixation with the survival of the fittest, with an interesting specimen.

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